Sammi
'No!'
Howling like a wounded animal, Rai writhes and thrashes against the guard wrestling him down. 'That—that's my home! W-What are they doing?'
'RESIST has attacked? Again?' Jinaka's face has turned a deathly white. 'Then, why the hell are we still here, Charlie? I need to get moving—Xu-May, get all the commanding officers ready for teleportation, now; Charlie, we need to get protocol-259 into action—'
'Just a moment, Sir.' The lieutenant, Charlie, nods at me, looking incredibly anxious. 'This girl claims to know one of the attackers. She identified one of them the moment we switched on the screen.'
'How does that help us now?' Jinaka pounds his fist against the wall, his knuckles coming back spotted with blood. 'I need to be out there, helping my people, not stuck down here with these monsters!'
'Because maybe she can stop them!'
Jinaka turns to me, his face puckered in anguish. I can barely speak. This man is the ruler of our entire planet. All my life I've seen his face: on posters adorning our walls, on our television screens, in our school textbooks. On the front of our protest placards. . .
I remember Musa's cheeks, flushed with passion, as he stormed through the streets with Jinaka's face held high over his head. End the Futurists today, we will make Jinaka pay. . .
In my eyes, this is the face of evil. The face of a tyrant. Condemning the people I love to die.
But right here? Right now? This is the face of a broken man.
My tears are blinding, so heavy I can't stop them, my heart splintering, pulled in so many directions. I don't know how much longer I can hold it together. . .
'Sammi?' I feel Kass's fingers, bound and tied, flutter against the back of my hand. 'Who was it? Who did you see?'
I saw rage. And in that rage, I saw myself. I saw Auntie. I saw Nura, and Mum, and Dad, and every other Resister I'd ever grown up with—
'Musa.' I whisper. 'I saw Musa.'
YOU ARE READING
The Elementalists
幻想***Featured in YA SCI-FI & FANTASY, SECRET TREASURES and WATTPAD UNDISCOVERED STORIES 2019 *** "The truth can be weathered, eroded; it's every shade of grey that lives in the mist; it's sunrise and sunset and everything in between. . ." Kass is a go...
